While we used to complain about rainy weather, people in many parts of Germany are now longing for the relieving water. It is too dry, nature and agriculture suffer from a drought. What does that mean for our everyday life?
With our French neighbors, the water crisis has reached its peak, the government is talking about the “worst drought” ever recorded in the country. But the drought of the last few months has also given cause for concern in more and more regions in Germany.
Where great rivers once flowed, only dry riverbeds can now be found. Is Germany, which used to be so spoiled with rain, now facing a drought fueled by climate change?
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Central and eastern Germany are particularly affected by the drought. According to the German Weather Service (DWD), the amount of precipitation was extremely low, especially in the federal states of Brandenburg, Berlin, Saxony and Hesse. Even the Rhine is currently not even a meter deep in some places due to the drought, and the water level has halved in some cases.
“The running water network in Germany shows its skeleton,” says Dietrich Borchardt, Professor for Aquatic Ecosystem Analysis at the Helmholtz Center for Environmental Research, in an interview with the “Süddeutsche Zeitung”.
A real problem, especially for the economy: Many tourist steamers, but above all transport ships that are important for industry, can only be loaded halfway or even not at all. The inner-German waterways are among the most important transport routes for the import and export of goods. If the water level is permanently too low, this branch of industry faces a massive problem.
“The water management effects of the climate crisis are already noticeable in Germany, which is actually water-rich,” Professor Reimund Schwarze from the Helmholtz Center for Environmental Research is certain in an interview with FOCUS online. “They will most likely intensify over the next few years and decades, so that there may be water stress at least regionally.”
If there were actually an acute water emergency in Germany, it would have significant consequences for everyday life: “The mains-connected drinking water supply could no longer be maintained locally, at least temporarily, so that municipalities would have to enable a replacement water supply for the population in cooperation with the water suppliers. ‘ says Black.
He can also imagine local restrictions on water use, for example when filling private swimming pools. In addition, there would be power failures because all river water-cooled thermal power plants in Germany would have to be throttled in electricity production.
The risk of forest fires would increase, and water would become scarce for wild animals. “From an overall economic point of view, agriculture would be particularly affected, which would make itself felt among citizens in the form of skyrocketing food prices,” predicts Schwarze, referring to the BBK’s risk analysis.
The drought hit agriculture harder than almost any other area. For example, the wheat harvest in Germany in the past two years was 15 percent below the long-term average due to the drought. The animal kingdom also suffers enormously, heat and drought represent extreme stress factors for the living beings and in many cases also imply the loss of their usual habitat.
Germany is a water emergency area this year. The precipitation has been too low since the beginning of the year, the months of March and July were particularly dry.
In March, for example, it rained only around twenty liters per square meter, while the comparative value in the reference period from 1961 to 1990 was just under sixty liters. This in turn leads to extreme dryness of the soil, which is now affecting almost the entire German federal territory.
Nevertheless, there is no reason for the population to panic. Scientists consider it highly unlikely that the population’s drinking water supply could be seriously threatened in the coming years.
Two thirds of our tap water comes from groundwater reservoirs. They are protected and around one hundred meters deep in the ground and are therefore not in danger of evaporating as a result of the prolonged drought.
According to Prof. Schwarze, there is initially no single measure that can prevent the growing risk of a water shortage in Germany. Rather, the government must now take long-term precautions: “We need a strategy for the coming decades that means a trend reversal in the use of water in many areas.”
The solution here could be the national water strategy developed by the federal government in 2021, which deals with a total of ten strategic topics for long-term water savings.
The goals here include expanding the water infrastructure, restoring the near-natural water balance and jointly protecting global water resources in the long term. In addition, possibilities for environmentally friendly water management are to be further developed and the Baltic Sea and North Sea are to be protected more intensively.
